


Tactile

by SharpestRose



Category: The Matrix (1999 2003 2003), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-06
Updated: 2011-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-21 02:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And it was their fault that she'd gone through it all, the irregularity in their program that had turned her skin to poison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tactile

Their skin is smooth, even to her fingertips with their infinite sensitivity. They say her skin feels that way too but she suspects they can't possibly understand. After all, in the-other-place-that-is-nowhere they took touch for granted. Even with an equal starting-line for their nerves now, her history has to count for something.

And when she was a little girl, twelve years old and dressed up in a blue taffeta dress that made a whispery sort of music when she moved, her mother had said to her _Ah, honey, you look darlin'. You'll never forget your first dance._

The dance she had then attended had been of average forgetability, with grape juice that was too sweet and tasted like bubblegum and too-loud pop songs over the speakers and fallen paper streamers that made their own _whish-whish_ noise under her feet as a counterpoint to her dress.

But Mom had been right in the end. She would never forget her first real dance, the beat of the music a hundred times louder than the strains of the first Spice Girls' album had been in the Meridian Middleschool gym. The taste of Bobby's skin, the press of his body against her and John behind her with his hand stroking over her short-short hair (still the white streak, though, and she was glad not to lose it), the movement and sweat-slide and the presstangle _touch_ of it all.

A glitch, they called it. There were diagrams and charts and whole stacks of printed-out code but what it really meant was that what society had called a fluke of nature was some kind of bug in the system, a combination of irregular brainwaves on the part of the afflicted and a lack of foresight by the others.

 _Others_. The people here called them Agents but they were still just _others_ in her head. And it was their fault that she'd gone through it all, the irregularity in their program that had turned her skin to poison.

So she kills them now. Plugs back in and wears her gloves and reacquaints herself with the feel of long hair down her neck. And shoots them, punishment for their error. Xavier always told her there was nobody to blame, that it was just the way of things, but now she knows better.

That's not the proper reason to kill Agents ( _others_ ), the people here do it because they're trying to free those still trapped and fight injustice and noble things like that. But even after all this time and in such a different place, she's still got Erik in her head and he sits there and reminds her that those still trapped were what made her already painful predicament a thousand times worse. And it's not proper to listen to him when he says that, but she does anyway.

The real Erik, the one who doesn't sit behind her eyes, laughed when they brought him out. This was more than he could have ever hoped for, a world where only the open-minded could ever, by the very nature of the thing, be free. He lives with Mystique, who turned out to have brown hair and a lopsided smile and intelligent eyes, and makes lots of opinionated speeches in council meetings and is generally having the time of his life.

Once Erik and Mystique (who calls herself Raven now) and John had gotten free, they came back and tried to bring other mutants out with them. Few came, for all that they were supposed to be the ones who didn't buy into that whole 'God among insects' jive. The thought of being ordinary was too fearful.

Some did, though. She and Bobby were some of the first, because what did they have to stay for except each other? And so much to gain by risking the brave new world. She's learning to reach over and rest her hand on people's arms when she sits beside them to talk. She's learning to have flesh against her flesh, hot and damp and alive and _real_ , realer than anything could possibly be.  
 _  
John burnt his hand on a gas lamp and pulled his fingers back and muttered 'never felt that before. ow' and sucked on the burn and she held his wrist and felt the softness of the skin with her unfamiliar nerves and kissed the hurt better and said 'never felt that before' back at him and smiled._

John's skin and Bobby's skin is so smooth, and sometimes one will say to the other 'you feel different here', and then they catch themselves and look guilty because she can hear and never had the chance to know what they felt like there. But she has no room in her heart for sadness anymore, the hurts behind her. There's so much in front of her to hold her attention.

And her fingertips marvel at their softness.


End file.
